


Like This

by kagome_angel



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dark, Dialogue from within the Show, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Violence and/or Death, Murder, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, Twisted, VERY SLIGHT Hannibal/Will if You Tilt Your Head and Squint, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 05:24:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1333681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kagome_angel/pseuds/kagome_angel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It begins like this:  “Hello, Will.”  “Hello, Dr. Lecter.”</i><br/>A delving into the mind of Will Graham throughout the first season of <i>Hannibal</i>, particularly focusing on his relationship with Hannibal Lecter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like This

**Author's Note:**

> I did not intend for this to become so long but it just spiraled out of control. Spoilers abound, and there is plenty of dialogue from the show. I really just wanted to get into Will's mindset a little more, I think. And yes, there is a specific reason as to why I refer to Hannibal as "Dr. Lecter" or just "Lecter" a lot in the beginning, and then it changes toward the end and I begin referring to him by his first name. This is because, to begin with, Will does not think of him as a friend and is not comfortable with even thinking of him as "just Hannibal."
> 
> I am totally out of my element here, guys. I love Hannibal. I love the intelligence of it, the attention paid to the detail, the intricacies of the character interactions, and the utter mindfuck that comes with being pulled into Dr. Hannibal Lecter's gravity. I know I haven't done it justice, but I hope someone out there enjoys this little labor of love. Thank you!

It begins like this:

“Hello, Will.”

“Hello, Dr. Lecter.”

Will does not like or appreciate the other man's greeting—they are not even acquaintances, much less friends, and therefore the psychiatrist has no right whatsoever to be so... familiar. Nevertheless, Will settles for a mostly polite tone with just a hint of disinterest (he feels the need to remind both Dr. Lecter and Jack Crawford of the reality of the situation—he knows the _real_ reason why they are in this room together and he isn't at all happy about it). Will's greeting is forced and utterly formal. He does not return the small smile that he is given, why should he? The two of them are not old friends getting together for lunch. 

Initially, the 'good doctor' asks about the case itself, but he gradually begins asking Will more and more about himself, and Will doesn't like _that_ , either. There are already quite enough people that have plundered around the recesses of his mind, and Will does not intend to add this stranger to the list.

Feeling fifty different shades of unsettled, he excuses himself and sincerely hopes that this is the first and last time he will be on the receiving end of Dr. Lecter's psychoanalyzing skills.

(He knows better, and the two men he left behind in that room know better, but for now, he chooses to try to let it slide—never mind that it grips him and digs in with impossibly sharp claws, giving him no real chance of escape.)

~*~

Their second meeting is unexpected and a little more pleasant, if only because Dr. Lecter brings him breakfast, and the first bite of the flavorful scrambled eggs lets him know that the other man is quite an exceptional cook. 

He supposes that the food is meant to be an apology of sorts, or a call for a truce. After all, they are supposed to be working together today, sans Jack Crawford. Delicious breakfast or not, Will still has his guard up.

Will insists – between mouthfuls – that they should keep this (whatever _this_ is) professional. Just because you have to work with someone does not mean that you have to be best buddies. Aside from that, he still isn't fond of the idea of the psychiatrist going through the layers of his mind with a fine-toothed comb. 

“Or we could socialize like adults,” Dr. Lecter suggests. “God forbid we become friendly.”

Will fights the urge to scoff. “I don't find you that interesting,” he bluntly replies, and is mildly surprised when the doctor is not at all put off by his words. 

“You will,” Dr. Lecter replies, and it sounds very much like a promise.

Will has this nagging, sneaking suspicion that Dr. Lecter is not the kind of man to break promises.

~*~

He was initially more than a little reluctant to bring Dr. Lecter with him to Garrett Jacob Hobbs' residence, but in the aftermath of it all, he's actually a bit grateful for the other man's presence. Where Will is a terrified, trembling wreck, the psychiatrist is calm and collected, regarding the scene before him with the same equanimity that Will reserves for crime scenes. This is indeed a crime scene, but it is the first of which that Will has actually found himself literally standing in the shoes of a killer.

He knows that everyone will tell him that he had no other choice. He knows that everyone will commend him for shooting a madman in an attempt to save an innocent girl. He knows that they'll never look at him the way they will look at Hobbs' corpse: with contempt and disgust. He knows all of these things as he presses already-blood-slick hands to Hobbs' daughter's neck, desperately trying to staunch the bleeding. 

(Yes, he knows all of this, and yet... he's already petrified over the prospect of what he might see the next time he glances at a mirror.)

When the ambulance arrives, he watches as EMS workers rush to load the wide-eyed girl into the back and get her to the hospital. He doesn't even bother to say anything when Dr. Lecter climbs into the back of the ambulance as well. 

As the ambulance drives off, sirens wailing, the single word the man he'd just killed had rasped to him plays over and over again in his mind: _See?_

His eyes are wide open but nothing – absolutely nothing – is registering at the moment.

(The truth of the matter is that his eyes are wide open but he is hopelessly blind and he doesn't know his own handicap yet, but he will.

He will.)

~*~

Lecter deems him fit to return to the field and they talk—they have an actual, genuine conversation about Abigal, the daughter of Hobbs... the girl that Will has essentially assisted in orphaning. He doesn't like to admit it, even if only to himself, but the fact that the other man seems to sympathize with him (or at least agree with him on several key points) brings him some measure of unexpected (and unwarranted) comfort.

In all honesty, he's not sure how he should feel about that. Perhaps he should be grateful that someone can kind of understand _him_ for once. Perhaps he should be glad that someone aside from a murderer is paying his mind a visit. 

They don't agree when it comes to the topic of whether Abigail actually helped her father kill the girls, but Will senses that while Lecter is willing to consider the possibility, he doesn't want it to be true. Will isn't willing to entertain the idea of the young girl assisting her father in his... recreational activities, and not just because he doesn't _want_ it to be a reality. It just doesn't _fit_. 

He can't help the hint of sarcasm in his voice when he poses the question: “Is this therapy, or a support group?”

The other man answers him without hesitation: “It is whatever you need it to be.”

He leaves Lecter's office feeling just a little lighter than he had when he'd entered it.

(The nightmares haven't yet begun.)

~*~

The fact that Hobbs is dead doesn't make the killings stop (the serial killers continue to perform their heinous deeds—just because one of them is dead doesn't mean that they all are). The fact that Hobbs is dead doesn't keep him from inhabiting Will's thoughts, either, haunting his mind like a ghost. He sees him when he shouldn't, when he knows he's not there, and Lecter tries to tell him that it's stress, but Will thinks, _knows_ there has to be more to it than that.

He cannot help but wonder if he is genuinely beginning to lose it. Is this the beginning of a gradual spiral downward into insanity?

He tries to push it out of his mind, thinks it will fade away into nothingness at some point, and he'll be left wondering why he ever worried or had these visions and these insecurities to begin with.

When he saves the pretty blonde diabetic woman from becoming food for the psychopathic pharmacist's mushrooms, he thinks to himself that he's helped save a few lives now since the Hobbs incident. Had he not killed Hobbs, Abigail would have died. Had he not agreed to work on this case, the still-breathing victim that had been found at the initial crime scene and had been rushed to the nearest hospital would have died. And this poor woman would have remained in the trunk of this car, covered in dirt, until the pharmacist chose to plant her in the ground. 

They are _this_ close, _he_ is _this_ close to catching this guy when they are hit with the knowledge that their new-found redhead journalist friend has inadvertently (or otherwise) given their murderer a heads-up and a chance to attempt to outrun his fate.

(She calls him demented in her lovely article. He thinks she might be right.)

This is when he sees the stag for the first time: large and muscular with jet-black plumage, which makes no sense because stags do not have feathers. However, perhaps it doesn't have to make sense.

The sight of it grips at his heart and squeezes with icy, non-existent fingers (claws). And it's funny how something so utterly terrifying can also bring him a sense of comfort.

(There's a connection here, somewhere. He knows it. He feels it. He just hasn't found it yet.)

~*~

He is able to admit to Lecter that he enjoyed killing Hobbs. He is able to admit it to the psychiatrist before he can even admit it to himself. 

Perhaps that says something him. About the man sitting across from him, smiling calmly and talking about the power God feels when He kills humans. Perhaps it says something about the both of them.

( _“Did God feel good about that?”_

_“He felt powerful.”_ )

~*~

He, Alana, and Dr. Lecter take Abigail back to her former home in Minnesota; they watch as she walks through the house, asking various questions (“Is that where all my blood was?”) in a detached manner, as if she is an outsider looking in as opposed to a person who survived such a horrific turn of events. She asks Will about his job, too, asks him if he does this sort of thing often (this going places and thinking about killing thing).

“Too often,”he admits, feeling tense and displaying it. Right now, he is the polar opposite of Abigail, who acts as if she is merely discussing the weather. Quick and to the point, not giving the slightest hint of an emotion other than a sort of deadpan curiosity. 

“So you pretended to be my dad?” she asks, sounding nonchalant and unaffected. “What did it feel like to be him?”

“It feels like I'm talking to his shadow suspended on dust,” he tells her, and he expects an odd look, or a tilt of the head at the least, but her face is as unexpressive as it has been ever since she... woke up from the whole incident, honestly. 

“No wonder you have nightmares,” she says, and her indifference is just a little unnerving. 

They then begin talking about the phone call that was received the day her father killed her mother, and very nearly killed her as well. Will asks her if she's heard the voice before, and she replies that she hasn't. He informs that he believes there is a possibility that another killer contacted Hobbs—the copycat that killed Cassie Boyle. 

Abigail seems slightly shell-shocked, and this is the first genuine emotion that Will has seen cross her features today. “Someone who's still out there?”

Will nods an affirmative, watches as she swallows and briefly glances away before meeting his gaze once more. She says nothing else on the matter; she merely brushes past him and heads into the living room. There, they begin going through boxes of evidence, and she eventually asks if they are going to reenact the crime. 

“You be my dad,” she says, pointing at Will. She turns to Alana next. “You be my mom.” She points at Dr. Lecter last: “And you be the man on the phone.” They share an unreadable sort of stare until the psychiatrist turns away from her and her gaze returns to the box before her. 

They reenact nothing, though, and Abigail murmurs, “You're not going to find any of those girls, you know.”

“What makes you say that?” Will asks.

“He would honor every part of them. He used to make plumbing putty out of elk's bones. Whatever bones are left of those girls are probably holding pipes together.” She says this without a shudder of horror, without a shedding of tears, without any inflection at all. It's almost as if this hasn't touched her yet... but that doesn't seem right, either. Maybe it's simply her way of dealing at the moment, her only means of holding herself together. 

(Will understands unconventional grief.)

“Where did he make this 'putty'?” Lecter queries.

“At the cabin,” Abigail replies. “I can show you tomorrow--”

The sound of a door opening causes them all to fall silent, listening, and then Alana says, “Abigal, there's someone here.”

It's a friend of Abigail's—possibly the only one the girl has remaining, and so Will and the others give them some privacy, not protesting when the two girls elect to go outside and talk.

Moments later, they hear yelling, and what is unmistakably a male's voice, so Will decides to investigate and Dr. Lecter volunteers to join him. He instantly regrets letting Abigail get out of his sight when he observes a young man having an altercation of some sort with the two girls, but he leaves as soon as Will and Lecter approach. 

The mother of Abigail's friend – Marissa, she'd said her name was – is suddenly there as well, demanding that Marissa come home, and the two leave together though it is fairly obvious that Marissa's departure is a reluctant one. 

Abigail insists that she doesn't know the guy—that this is the first time that she's seen him.

(Will almost instinctively knows that it won't be the last.)

~*~

He dreams about killing Abigail. He feels a deep sense of satisfaction in his nightmare when he he slices her carotid artery and watches the blood spurt, and there's the stag, watching him. 

He feels guilty when he wakes up, and Dr. Lecter tells him that he shouldn't, because he has done nothing wrong and there is no way to control one's own dreams.

Will knows who he is; he knows that he is not Garrett Jacob Hobbs. He knows that he could never commit the kind of atrocities that--

\--if he's honest with himself, he has to admit that part of him is nervously awaiting the day when that same disgusting sense of satisfaction crosses over from his nightmares into his _reality_.

(He knows, _hopes_ that day will never come.)

~*~

They take Abigail to the cabin, where her father supposedly did his sickening 'work'. On this day, she is not so stone-faced. On this day, she tells them that her father never wasted any parts of his victims, because then it would just be murder. 

On this day, she looks at them with horror in her eyes and says, “He was feeding them to us, wasn't he?” 

The psychologist answers and Will is grateful for it: “It's very likely.”

Abigail opens her mouth as if to say something and then shuts it again. There is a pause, as if she is struggling to gather her thoughts and struggling to accept the very probable reality that she may have unknowingly ingested parts of her father's victims. “Before he cut my throat, he told me he killed those girls so he wouldn't have to kill me.”

On this day, she feels survivor's guilt.

Alana steps forward and speaks comfortingly to Abigail: “You're not responsible for anything your father did, Abigail.”

Not acknowledging Alana's words, Abigail continues, unshed tears shining in her eyes. “If he would have just killed me, none of those other girls would be dead.”

“We don't know that,” Alana tells her. “Your fath--”

A dark liquid drips from above and lands on Abigail's forehead. She wipes it away and they all glance upward—whatever the substance is, it looks remarkably like blood. 

Will is the first one to go upstairs, the first one to see the body of Abigail's friend Marissa impaled on the deer antlers that her father was so fond of. He immediately calls for investigators—namely Jack. Abigail is the second one to make it up the flight of stairs, despite protests from Alana. The girl becomes hysterical then, screaming, crying, all very appropriate emotions that are such a stark contrast to the utter apathy that she had displayed the day before.

Alana takes her back downstairs and outside, and Dr. Lecter joins him. Will knows that Jack will be angry at him, but that isn't nearly as important as trying to figure out who committed this crime. 

He and Lecter talk about it, batting ideas back and forth between them. He tells the psychiatrist that the man who'd been yelling at Abigail and Marissa yesterday was Cassie Boyle's brother. Things just aren't adding up for him, though, because he knows that Hobbs didn't kill Cassie Boyle--

“I know,” Dr. Lecter intones, and Will glances at him. “Garrett Jacob Hobbs would have honored every part of her.”

Jack interrupts them, and yes, he is as angry as Will knew he would be, but Will shrugs off the anger, choosing instead to continue analyzing the body, the evidence. He notes the blood and tissue in the girl's mouth, and Jack starts arguing with him before he can even begin to defend himself or piece all of this together: “You said that this copycat was an intelligent psychopath, Will. That there would be no traceable motive. No pattern. He wouldn't kill again this way, you said.”

“I may have been wrong about that,” Will admits, and this... this is like trying to make a square block fit in a round hole. Something simply isn't adding up. 

“Yes, because Garrett Jacob Hobbs never struck his victims,” Jack points out. “Why would the copycat do it?”

Dr. Lecter theorizes that the killer was provoked, and that Nicholas Boyle killed this girl, along with his own sister. 

“With or without Abigail Hobbs?” asks Crawford, and Will fights the urge to roll his eyes. He knows that Abigail played no part in this, and tells Jack as much. He shoots down the idea that Abigail might have known Nicholas Boyle prior to all of this as well, and he _really_ doesn't like it when Jack asks if he could possibly be allowing himself to be manipulated by Abigail. 

It feels like Jack is interrogating him, like they are on opposing sides here, and that makes Will a little uncomfortable. He appreciates that Dr. Lecter tries to diffuse the situation, but Jack proves to be pretty unrelenting.

“He said he was wrong about the copycat killer. I wanna know what else he's wrong about.”

Will is adamant about knowing that the individual who killed Cassie Boyle and the person who killed the girl before them are one and the same. The wound patters are almost identical... the same design... the same _humiliation_.

“Abigail Hobbs is not a killer,” Lecter states, “but she could be the target of one.”

Jack wants Abigail to be escorted away and the psychiatrist is the first one to leave. Will moves to join him, but Jack tells him to stay. He doesn't particularly want to at this current point in time, but he stays, and they go over the details of the crime scene again. They tensely discuss the murder and its similarities with the killing and presentation of Cassie Boyle, until--

\--Until they are called back to the Hobbs' residence. Alana, Dr. Lecter, and Abigail have all been attacked. By Nicholas Boyle. Everyone is fine, but Nicholas Boyle is missing, perhaps on the run, seeing as the blood on Abigail's hands (blood from having scratched Boyle) matches the tissue from the crime scene they just recently left. 

Jack assures that they'll find him, and Will stands and walks away, telling Jack that he simply wants to go home, and he does. He wants to go home and he wants to sleep nightmare-free and he wants to put all of this on pause for a little while, because thinking about it is making his head hurt. 

No matter how hard he tries, he just cannot seem to make the numbers add up correctly, not today.

(And maybe it's just as well, because he's never been the best at math, anyway.)

~*~

There are other cases that occupy his time, his thoughts: the children killers, the angel-maker. Somewhere in-between the two, he starts sleepwalking and he doesn't understand it so he consults Dr. Lecter because... well, he isn't sure why. Maybe because he feels secure in his presence, and he feels that he can spill his guts (figuratively) without being ridiculed or judged in any form. 

It's funny how this is the person he turns to at seven-thirty in the morning when he feels like he's losing his grip on reality, because he'd never imagined doing something like this, back when they first met. He'd never imagined that he would come to _rely_ on the psychiatrist as he does now. He'd never imagined that he would feel such a sense of camaraderie, and he'd never dared to think that he actually would come to not mind this man's intrusion into his headspace.

He apologizes for being so early, but Dr. Lecter waves his apology off, tells Will to never apologize for coming to him. They talk, and Lecter makes breakfast for the two of them.

As they sit down to eat, Will feels the need to jokingly say: “You know that saying, about how you are what you eat?” He says it because he knows it means nothing, not really. He says it because he knows how clean the psychiatrist is and how careful he is of how he prepares his meals. After all, Lecter himself had told him that he is very conscientious of what he puts in his body, and Will doesn't think there is anything wrong with that. 

(But the mental image of the other man as a cultured pig or fish or rabbit amuses him just a little—damn, it's too early in the morning for this... perhaps he truly _is_ losing his mind.)

Dr. Lecter smiles warmly at him. “Oh, yes, I am very familiar with that saying. I do have to admit, though, if I were what I eat, I would not like myself very much.”

They continue to joke and they laugh and they eat, momentarily avoiding the seriousness of Will's current 'issue', which is exactly what Will needs at the moment.

(He can see it, the stag, at the corner of his vision. It appears to be waiting patiently, expectantly. 

Will tries his best to ignore it—no sense in ruining a perfectly good breakfast.)

~*~

Eventually, it is brought to his attention that there is someone out there (someone in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to be precise) who kills in a very similar (almost identical) manner to that of whom has since been dubbed 'The Chesapeake Ripper.' Even after surveying the crime scene, Will does not believe for two seconds that Gideon and the Ripper are one and the same.

Gideon is a plagiarist... and Will is fairly certain that the true Ripper wouldn't approve of plagiarism. 

Will's theory proves correct—a bit difficult for the Ripper to leave Jack Crawford's former trainee's severed arm as a grotesque present when the Ripper is supposed to be behind bars in a psychiatric hospital, isn't it? No, no. The one who killed Miriam is the _real_ Ripper. 

(And he has yet to be caught.)

~*~

Each time that Jack seems to believe they are on the trail of the Ripper (Will knows better), the _real_ Ripper always swoops in, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. His victims are boldly and flamboyantly displayed in such a manner that suggests – no, _confirms_ – that their Ripper is proud of himself and determined to prove that he is nothing like the others. He makes his point, and he makes it well. 

And each and every time, he slips right through their fingers, which torments Will in ways that he can't quite describe, that he isn't sure he fully understands. It is important to him to catch all of these deplorable individuals, but this one... this one feels different. Nowadays, going to bed at night knowing that this killer is still out there bothers him immensely, more than any other case ever has.

Perhaps it's because he cannot see or feel The Chesapeake Ripper like he's been able to see and feel the others. He cannot get inside this killer's head, cannot see this particular murderer roaming the cracks and crevices of his own mind. It's never been like this before.

Or... perhaps he's just throwing himself into this case in a desperate attempt to forget what Garrett Jacob Hobbs has done to him (what _killing_ him has done to him). 

The case of The Chesapeake Ripper _does_ prove to be a decent distraction.

(However, on the nights that he wakes up in a cold sweat, he is reminded of guilt that he shouldn't feel but does—not guilt over killing Hobbs, but guilt over the crimes that he commits while his subconscious places him in Hobbs' shoes.) 

~*~

There is a skilled musician who uses human bodies as instruments. The body of one victim is found on a stage, throat cut, vocal cords white and shining, the neck of a cello shoved down the esophagus. The dead man had been played like a violin, and Will has the feeling that this musician doesn't always kill like this. This is not his first kill, but it is his first time to display a victim like this, to have his work out in the open without trying to hide what it _truly_ is. 

This... this is a performance for an audience. 

The question is, who is the audience?

(Will doesn't tell anyone that when he closes his eyes and imagines himself as this killer, the one who is clapping for him is Hobbs.)

~*~

“He was playing for me.” 

Will hears the voice, hears the words, but it is as if he is underwater and the voice is far away. He opens his eyes (or thinks he does), and there is the stag, foreboding and more real than it should be.

He tells himself he's dreaming, animals do not talk, and he opens his eyes – again – only to discover that he hasn't been asleep and he's been staring into the darkness of his living room for... he doesn't even know how long.

He flips on a light.

(It doesn't help.)

~*~

Oddly enough, it is Lecter who leads him to Tobias' doorstep. The man is intelligent, charming, and he obviously knows his stuff when it comes to music. Will is more than a little suspicious of him and slowly plays his cards, asking general questions about the murder and about the type of string Tobias uses in his instruments. 

He makes the mistake of leaving the building just long enough to confirm that he is hearing things (he was certain he'd heard an animal _screaming_ ), only to return and find that both of the officers who had accompanied him are dead. Tobias tries to kill him too, but he fails, only for the fact that Will nearly deafens them both by pulling the trigger on his pistol while it is dangerously close to both of their heads. 

The musician relents and retreats, and Will's aim proves to be as bad as ever when he fires a few shots at Tobias and misses each time. 

He has a feeling that the man won't go terribly far—and besides, they have all the evidence they need right here in this basement. There are human intestines here along with various instruments in the making, and now they will all know how Tobias' instruments produced their distinctive notes.

Later, when he sees Dr. Lecter bruised and battered, he blames himself for it, because if he'd only managed to keep the musician from escaping, the psychiatrist would not have been forced to deal with this whole incident. He realizes, with horrifying clarity, that Lecter could have been killed, and his stomach ties itself into knots over this unpleasant bit of knowledge. 

And the psychiatrist looks so relieved to find that Will himself is alive and well.

“I feel like I've dragged you into my world,” Will admits, leaning against the other man's desk. 

Dr. Lecter waves off what is leading into an apology. “No, I got here on my own.” He smiles up at Will. “But I appreciate the company.”

Will doesn't say, “So do I,” but he admits to himself that he appreciates Hannibal's company, too.

(He thinks that, if he is in hell, at least he isn't alone and he's with someone who clearly cares for his well-being. 

He doesn't know that he is quite possibly in the company of the devil himself.)

~*~

After it's all over—after they've solved the case of the killer who'd made a totem-pole out of his victims, Will thinks that he'll stop losing time. He'll stop forgetting how he got from point A to point B. Hell, maybe he'll even remember how in the hell he got from Grafton to Hannibal's house that morning he first viewed the totem-pole, the arms and legs of the dismembered victims sticking out at odd angles. 

That would be too easy, though, wouldn't it?

He doesn't dream about Lawrence Wells afterward. The seventy-year-old man is not the killer that decides to torment his mind that night. The one that _does_ comes as an unwelcome surprise, because he dreams of Abigail. Or, at least, he thinks that he's dreaming, until he blinks and realizes that he is staring at the dead body of Nicholas Boyle. Confused, he closes his eyes and he _clearly_ sees Abigail stab Boyle in the stomach with a look of horror on her face. She doesn't stop there—she guts him. 

He doesn't remember getting dressed and coming to the morgue. 

He shows up at Hannibal's unannounced once again (he'd bring doughnuts or something, but he's pretty sure that they aren't something the psychiatrist particularly appreciates, and he's a little too preoccupied to worry with them either way), and this time it is as if Lecter was expecting him. His greeting is soft and smooth and not at all alarmed.

_He knows_ , and Will somehow knows that he knows before Hannibal admits it. And yes, Will is angry. Yes, he is shocked. Yes, he is revolted and upset and maybe even a little frightened. This man, whom he has grown to trust, has assisted in the disposal of a body, and has kept it a secret from him. 

“We are her fathers now,” Hannibal insists, and a few minutes later, while Will is still trying to process all of this, he asks: “Do I need to call my lawyer, Will?”

Will glances at the other man and silently shakes his head, knowing that he should feel like he is damning himself – damning _all_ of them – but instead he feels this odd sense of _peace_ , its warmth wrapping around his guilt, gently cradling it. He doesn't understand it and he doesn't want to examine it too closely. He doesn't have it in him, not tonight.

Hannibal assures him that they are doing the right thing—that, essentially, they will look back on this and remember it fondly, one day. The hand on his shoulder is warm, the touch gentle, and he remembers what Hannibal had told him a few days earlier:

“I'm your friend, Will. I don't care about the lives you save. I care about _your_ life.”

He won't say anything to Jack about this; he will keep their secret. 

(Because friends protect each other, don't they?)

~*~

He thinks it's absurd at first, drawing a clock face and numbering it, making note of the proper time and his location and his name. It helps, though. It reminds him that he is _here_ , in the present. It may seem like a ridiculous exercise, but if it works, if it helps keep him grounded and helps to keep him from coming a little more unhinged... then who is he to think badly of it?

It doesn't stop him from losing himself in the moment, though. It doesn't stop him from becoming entirely too _involved_ in a crime scene. It doesn't stop him from getting the already-deceased victim's blood all over his hands, and he panics, for a moment thinking that he is the one who did this to her even while _knowing_ deep down that he is _not_.

In the kitchen, he gazes at the counter and briefly considers drawing a clock in blood, but he doesn't do it. He washes his hands and he tries to ignore the look that Jack gives him. He tries to sidestep the man's questions, to wave them off, suddenly becoming evasive. But Jack asks if he is broken, and Will is starting to believe that he is.

But the truth is: He can do this much better, even broken, than anyone else _unbroken_ can. 

He wonders if he may have a tumor or a blood clot; he tells Hannibal (who seems convinced that he has a mental illness rather than a physical one), who gives in and recommends a neurologist. He even pulls strings to get him seen fairly quickly, and drives him to his appointment as well.

Will is grateful that he's not having to do this alone.

While in the MRI machine, he sees himself as the killer at the most recent crime scene yet again—he sees himself hiding under the bed, waiting, and then _grabbing_ and _slicing_ , carving a grotesque smile, wanting the woman to portray happiness in death. 

He's more than a little rattled when he is told that there is nothing neurologically wrong with him, and he sincerely does not know how to currently cope with the possibility that he may have a genuine psychological illness. 

Choosing to focus on his work instead of what may or may not be wrong with him, he pays a visit to the crime scene in Greenwood, Delaware once again, and he swears he sees _someone_ (perhaps the killer, even) under the bed, but before he can confront her, she runs away from him. He reaches for her as she rushes past him, grabbing her arm, but she doesn't even give a moment's pause—she keeps running, right out the door. 

Will looks down at the skin – her skin, or _not_ her skin at all – in his hand, a whole layer of it that had slipped off of her arm like a loose glove would slip off of a hand.

When he is next aware of himself and his surroundings, he notes that it is nearly three hours later and he is in the woods, cold and on the edge of panic. 

“It's one-seventeen A.M., we're in Greenwood, Delaware, my name is Will Graham, and you're alive.”

(He tells her she's alive, because if she's still out there, maybe she needs to hear it.)

~*~

Dr. Lecter suggests that the girl has Cotard's syndrome, and it fits. Will and Jack speak to the girl's mother, and the possibility of Cotard's seems even more plausible. The puzzle pieces are falling into place in this particular case—Will feels that he understands this girl better than he initially did, and yet....

And yet, he still has no clue what is really going on inside his own head. So he schedules another appointment with Dr. Sutcliffe, and a repeat MRI is performed. When it is over, however, there is no-one there waiting for him, no-one offering to interpret the results of his brain scan. He wanders down abandoned hallways, feeling his pulse quicken a little with every step he takes. He approaches Dr. Sutcliffe's office, and his stomach drops when he sees the blood on the door handle. 

Feeling as if he is having a nightmare, he carefully enters the office, knowing that something is terribly wrong, The kind of wrong that is utterly unfixable. 

Dr. Sutcliffe sits behind his desk, and there is blood everywhere. He is smiling, though not of his own volition. He is dead, and that smile on his face has been _carved_ there.

He has to call the investigation team, of course. He has to let them know what's happened, and he has to let them know that he was the only one here when it happened, even though he knows that it will only make him look like a suspect. In reality, he's beginning to become suspicious of himself, in a sense, even though he knows he shouldn't because he _knows he didn't do this_. 

Jack presents the scenario that Georgia Madchen followed Will here and then killed Dr. Sutcliffe while Will was having the MRI done. Not improbable, Will supposes, but something still doesn't sit right with him about all of this....

That night while he is trying to sleep, something occurs to him and he looks under his bed to find that he is not alone. Georgia is there with him. He half-sinks, half-rolls to the floor and he gazes at her, speaking calmly, letting her know where she is and letting her know that this is a two-way street: he is not alone right now, and neither is she. She asks if she is alive, and he touches her hand when she reaches for him. 

(He can see in her eyes that she believes him.)

~*~

He dreams that he's watching mountains of ice fall apart. He dreams that he's on the beach (the one Lawrence Wells had used for his grotesque totem-pole) and that the tide is coming in, rising higher and higher and--

\--play in the water

(and you'll drown.)

~*~

Abel Gibson escapes; he kills again. Will's hallucinations worsen, and everything seems to run together. He doesn't feel like himself anymore, doesn't know how to get back to the person that he was before all of this started, before he killed Hobbs. He's afraid of this part of himself. He's afraid of this—this _not knowing_. And it's funny, because it seems like everyone is in his head except for Will himself. 

(And what a fine time to be absent from one's own mind.)

~*~

He concludes that Gideon is trying to get the attention of the Chesapeake Ripper, and he knows that there is _no way_ that this can end well. A copycat begging the real Ripper for a confrontation is simply a bloodbath waiting to happen, Will thinks. 

And then there's the chance that Gideon is going to systematically and methodically kill each and every psychiatrist he's come into contact with. This makes Will worry for Alana, and when they find Dr. Paul Carruthers' body in his office, well, it makes him worry more. To make matters worse, Gideon has Freddie Lounds in his company (a possible kidnapping), and there's no telling what he may or will do with or to her. 

The next body that they find is mutilated in a manner that almost perfectly duplicates Carruthers' murder, except the right arm is missing, and Will knows this is not Gideon's work. This is the work of the real Ripper, and he is giving them a clue. 

“Where's the last place you saw a severed arm, Jack?”

They're on the way to the observatory where Miriam Lass' severed arm was found in less than an hour. Jack informs him that he wants him to wait in the car and tells him that he looks like hell. Which is fine, because Will knows he looks like hell, and he is pretty sure that he either is coming down with something or has come down with something. He feels fluid, like liquid seeping into the cracks in the floorboards, dripping into places where it is not necessarily welcome. 

He gets out of the car anyway, or he thinks he does. He also thinks he has every intention of following Jack inside the observatory despite their earlier conversation. He gets distracted, though, because the stag is here with him, not far in the distance. It leaves and he staggers off after it, suddenly needing to _touch_ it, to feel that it is real beneath his fingers. 

It is gone though; it has disappeared into the nothingness, into whatever recess from whence it came, perhaps. It has, however, led him to a vehicle. Will figures it may be Gideon's escape route and he takes a risk, climbing into the back of it, prepared to ambush the man that has been trying to bait the Ripper, provided Jack doesn't get to him first. 

He is fully prepared to see Gideon attempt to make his getaway, but the one who joins him in the car is not Gideon. It is Garrett Jacob Hobbs. It makes no sense, Will knows. It makes no sense, and Hobbs is dead, but here he is, telling him that he sick. Will doesn't need to hear this; he knows that he is sick. 

Gun in hand, he orders the other man (zombie, ghost) to drive, giving him directions to Hannibal's home. He has to get to Dr. Lecter, because he knows the psychiatrist will be honest with him, will tell him what the hell is going on, and will help him find purchase in the crumbling corners and corridors of his mind. 

Hannibal lets them in without question, and Will has a breakdown right in front of him. It is as if he is outside of his own body, watching himself fall apart, watching himself sob and struggle to grasp reality. Hannibal insists that no-one is in the room with them even though Will strongly believes that there is.

He blacks out then. 

(And for a moment, there is sweet, sweet release from this horrible nightmare.)

~*~

When he comes to, he is still standing, and Hannibal performs a quick neurological check on him before guiding him to sit down on one a nearby chair, informing him that he may have had a seizure. He asks for Will to recall the last thing that he remembers, and Will insists that he remembers being with Hobbs. 

Hannibal brings a hand to his forehead, and his touch is cool and comforting—Will feels like he is burning up and freezing at the same time. The psychiatrist informs him that he has a fever (no surprise) and that he was suffering a delusion earlier, telling him that he believed Hobbs was in the room with him. 

“You killed Garrett Jacob Hobbs once. You can find a way to kill him again.”

The words strike something deep inside of him, and Will contemplates them, wondering how you can kill something or someone that is already dead. 

He realizes belatedly that Hannibal is getting ready to go somewhere, and he asks where as he watches the other man slip on a jacket. He listens, feeling woozy, as Hannibal explains that Gideon has mutilated Dr. Chilton and left him clinging to life, and Alana might be his next target. 

Will stands, determined that he will go with Hannibal, but the psychiatrist gently pushes him back down onto the chair, telling him that he needs to go to the hospital and he will call Jack. 

The moment he leaves the room, though (presumably to call Jack), Will snatches the gun and the keys which Hannibal had left on the table, and he leaves, hoping that Hannibal will forgive him for it.

He finds who _must_ be Gideon, gazing in Alana's window and philosophizing about self-identity. Will knows it has to be Gideon, but who he sees is Hobbs, and he has a fevered, garbled conversation with him—one that makes too little sense and yet makes entirely _too much_ sense. 

He pulls the trigger--

(--and he kills Garrett Jacob Hobbs for a second time.)

~*~

The fever goes away and he feels a little better, though he is concerned as to why all of the physicians are seemingly puzzled over what is wrong with him. So far, he's been given no explanation for the high fevers or the seizure-like activity or the dreams that feel like reality. 

He visits Georgia Madchen, and his heart feels lighter when he sees her smile. 

She tells him that she dreamed that he killed Dr. Sutcliffe. She tells him, “I couldn't see your face.” 

(Honestly, these days when he looks in the mirror, he has trouble seeing his face too.)

~*~ 

Hannibal kindly brings him chicken soup, but the psychiatrist is obviously never one to give his dishes such boring, modest names. No, Hannibal, with rather higher pretensions, identifies the soup as 'Silkie chicken in a broth.' He names off the ingredients like he's memorized the recipe (and he probably has), and Will knows he'll never be able to recall what they are, so he just dubs it 'chicken soup' and leaves it at that, inwardly smirking at the slightly offended – almost _wounded_ – look that the psychiatrist shoots him.

They sit and they eat together by the window, and they talk about Will's health and about Georgia, and they talk about a few other mundane things—conversation toeing the line between that of friendship and something more... therapeutic. 

“Let's hope your soup works,” Will says as he walks Hannibal to the door, bidding him farewell for now.

Hannibal nods and offers him a smile. “Let's. I do sincerely hope you feel better very soon, Will.”

(He thinks he does feel better, a little, but really... he thinks a lot of things lately, and he is aware that many of these things make no sense at all.)

~*~

“She didn't kill herself.” Will is adamant about this as he argues with Jack, gazing down at the severely burned body of Georgia Madchen. “She wasn't suicidal, Jack, she was sick. I was here. I spoke to her.” And he knows Jack isn't happy about that, but he doesn't really care. He knows how she felt and he can relate to her. Aside from that, the case that the FBI has been building against her? It doesn't matter anymore. You cannot judge someone who is already dead.

That night, he dreams about her. She is in his bedroom, just standing there. But then she is moving, wanting him to follow, and he does. He follows her out the front door and he stands there on the steps of his porch, watching as she turns in the snow to face him. 

“See?” she asks as she is impaled and then set on fire right before his eyes. Her body burns away to nothing—but, no. That isn't entirely true. Her body burns, and then _becomes_ that of the stag. 

And just like that, he begins to understand. To know. 

(The puzzle pieces are slowly falling into place: organized chaos.)

~*~

He is thinking more clearly than ever when he tells Jack his revelation: that Georgia Madchen was murdered because she saw the face of the one who killed Dr. Sutcliffe. He knows that the piece of melted plastic found at the scene of her death was part of the _murder weapon_ , not a tool she used to commit suicide. 

He connects the murders, more of the pieces fall into place, and he _trembles_ with the intensity of it all—of what he _knows_ to be absolutely and undeniably true, even though Jack Crawford is still arguing with him, still insisting that Georgia killed Sutcliffe because he was killed in exactly the same manner as-- 

“She was _copied_ ,” Will says, not backing down from this fight. His vision is getting fuzzy, blurring at the edges, but his mind and his thoughts are like crystal and he _has_ to get Jack to see. “Like whoever killed Marissa Schuur and Cassie Boyle _wanted to copy_ how Garrett Jacob Hobbs killed his victims.” He remembers those girls very vividly, their bodies made into pincushions by antlers. “But not _exactly_ how.” 

He can tell by the look on Jack's face that the man is no closer to believing him than he initially was, because he mentions Nicholas Boyle, and the fact that Will once said Boyle was the copycat. 

(A dead man cannot 'copy' anyone but the sleeping and the dead.)

~*~

He has to admit that he feels a bit crestfallen, for whatever reason, when Hannibal doesn't seem to believe him any more than Jack did. Will tells him that he knows that this is personal now, if it wasn't before. Georgia was framed for Dr. Sutcliffe's murder, but the target was Will himself. Someone wanted to frame _him_.

He convinces himself that it's okay that Hannibal doubts him, because Abigail... Abigail believes him, and she's already agreed to help him, to go back with him to Minnesota. He's going to start where the copycat started, retrace steps and put this all together so that all the pieces are finally in place and _everything_ makes sense.

He storms out of Dr. Lecter's office and he goes to get Abigail. They are on a plane bound for Minnesota in a matter of a couple of hours, and the flight is both agonizingly long and incredibly short. Once they arrive at the cabin that Hobbs used to tear his victims apart, Abigail _really_ starts to talk. All of the conversation on the plane fades to the very back of Will's mind, and he focuses on the here and now, on the words that push their way past her trembling lips. 

“Do you ever hunt?” she asks him, and to anyone else, perhaps, the question would sound innocent enough. Just a question about hobbies. However, Will can feel the back of his neck prickle unpleasantly.

He answers calmly: “I fish.”

She reasons that they are both essentially the same thing, except you stalk when you hunt, and you lure when you fish. Will has to agree that, yes, they are very similar, but he doesn't tell her this. Instead, he inhales sharply and exhales slowly, swallowing hard enough to hurt his throat before he asks:

“Were you more a fisherman or a hunter?”

She looks confused now. Confused and alarmed and maybe even a little afraid, like she's said to much, or maybe Will's just _learned_ too much all on his own. It's as if she didn't intend for her little 'hints' to give her away entirely.

“My dad taught me how to hunt,” she weakly replies, glancing away, and he knows that she knows she's given him the wrong answer. 

Both of them know what he is asking, and Will really doesn't like it when people play dumb with him, or when people deliberately avoid answering truthfully, or when people treat him like he has no clue what he is talking about when he _does_. He slowly advances upon her, making her take steps away from him and towards a set of bloody antlers still hanging on the wall. “All those girls your dad killed... did you fish, or did you _hunt_ , Abigail?”

He sees the color drain from her face, sees panic chasing after horror in her wide eyes. “I was the lure,” she breathes, staring at him, not breaking eye-contact. And then, “Did Hannibal tell you?”

Will feels the color drain from his own face. Hannibal _knew_ this and did not tell him?! Hannibal had been protecting her this entire time... but to what end? For what reason? “No, he didn't.”

Abigail is breathing faster, and Will thinks he hears her pulse quicken, but it's probably just his own. “He said you would protect me,” she says, looking more and more uncertain by the second. “He said that you'd keep it a secret--”

The sound of the blood rushing through his constricting arteries drowns out her voice, and it's so easy, so simple to just lift her and shove her back until the antlers pierce her body and he lets her hang there--

\--but no. No, he doesn't. Just another hallucination. He knows he's feverish and he feels weak, but he knows what Abigail has done now and he knows that she and Hannibal have kept it from him. 

“There is something wrong with you,” she says from the other side of the room, and he blinks slowly at her. “I think you're still sick!”

“Jack Crawford was right about you!” Will yells at her, watching her cringe, feeling as if he is going to be sick. He is disappointed and he is hurt and he is angry and losing his grip on _everything_ again, and he's watching it slip through his fingers like grains of sand. Abigail was the lure that brought the girls to her father; she'd helped him kill them, and Will had done nothing but _defend_ her this whole time! “How many other people have you killed?!” 

She shakes her head in horror, insisting again and again that she is not a murderer, and then asking him if he believes she is the copycat. Will knows that if it isn't her, it is someone that she knows.

“Ever think that somebody could be _you_?” she practically hisses, bitterness rolling off her tongue in thick, scalding, accusatory waves. “You were there; you saw Marissa! You knew about this place, and there is something _wrong_ with you!”

There is a noise in his head—a high-pitched whine that drowns out her voice and makes him cover his ears, trying to escape it. Everything goes black, but the noise is still there, much louder than even his own thoughts. Keeping his ears covered isn't helping at all.

(You can't use your hands to muffle the sounds that come from within your own mind.)

~*~

When he opens his eyes again, he is on a plane and a flight attendant is telling him in a rather haughty voice that he has to disembark because they are preparing for new passengers to board. Disoriented, he looks around, blinking repeatedly, trying to gather his bearings. He apologizes to the woman, and asks where they are. 

She tells him that they are back at the airport in Virginia, and he feels the chilled tendrils of panic begin to slither through him, turning the blood in his arteries and veins to ice. He asks the flight attendant if she'd noticed a young woman traveling with him, and she shakes her head. 

“All the other passengers are disembarked. It's just you, sir.” 

He closes his eyes again and breathes in deeply through his nose and out through his mouth, swallowing the scream that tries to force its way out of his throat. He can't even be bothered to look at his watch at the moment.

(My name is Will Graham. My name is Will Graham. My name is _Will Graham_ and I am _not_ a murderer.)

~*~

He is hunting, even though he isn't much of a hunter. He is stalking after a creature that has haunted his nightmares, and has even shown itself to him during the day. He doesn't know why he is hunting it, exactly. He doesn't know why he has to kill it, he just _knows_ that he has to, because if he doesn't, things will only get worse from here on out.

He sees it standing amongst a thicket of trees, and it sees him, too. It runs, and he shoots, wounding it, though not killing it. He follows the trail of blood (there is so _much_ of it), believing the wound is fatal and it is only a matter of time before blood loss weakens it to the point of no longer being able to run from him. And then....

What he sees is not the stag. It has antlers but its body resembles that of a human being. 

_Wendigo_ , he thinks, and then, _cannibal_. 

It's the face of the creature that really _gets_ to him, though, because he knows that face; he is _certain_ he does--

\--He wakes up before he can investigate any further, before he can approach the once-stag to get a better look. He wakes up in a cold sweat; the dogs are all on-edge and there is mud all over his feet. He has no idea where he's been—he doesn't remember going anywhere during the night. 

Will is thirsty, more than likely dehydrated. He has the fever to blame for that. He stumbles to the kitchen, his surroundings going in and out of focus. He turns on the kitchen faucet with a trembling hand and he takes a drink before popping some aspirin, hoping they will help with the fever and the pounding in his head. 

He swallows the pills and more water, but he realizes all too soon that there's no way he can keep them down; he leans forward and retches into the sink, backing away from it in terror when he sees not only the aspirin that he'd just tried to take, but also a _human ear_.

Will, horrified and shaking so badly he can barely stand, much less press the buttons on his cell phone, calls the one person he feels he can turn to at this moment and then he vacates his home for the moment, choosing instead to wait out on the porch steps, shivering and rubbing at his arms.

(The funny thing is, he doesn't even feel the cold, not really.)

He waits, dazed, for Hannibal's arrival, not even knowing how long he's out in the cold before he sees the familiar Bently come to a stop at the end of his driveway—the measurement of time seems of little importance. 

“I went to Minnesota,” Will manages to say through chattering teeth as soon as Hannibal is within earshot. “I took Abigail. We went to Minnesota, and she didn't come back with me....”

“Show me,” Lecter replies, his voice somehow both firm and yet gentle. He offers his hand to help Will up and Will takes it; he figures he could use all the help he can get right now.

They go back inside and Will points in the direction of the kitchen before sitting down on a nearby chair. Hannibal drapes a blanket around his shoulders before heading into the kitchen, stopping at the sink. Will begins talking again and when Hannibal turns to look at him, his expression is impassive, unreadable. 

“I don't remember going to bed last night,” Will tells him. “But I must have. I don't know. Maybe I... I got up... to let the dogs out... and... and... and then—”

“When was the last time you saw Abigail?” Hannibal curtly interrupts, obviously wanting to get to the heart of the matter. 

Will keeps on telling his story, though, not redirecting his thoughts, not yet wanting to answer the question he has been asked. “I woke up, my feet were muddy--”

“Will!” Hannibal's voice is sharper this time, demanding a proper answer. “When was the last time you saw Abigail?”

“Yesterday,” Will admits, “at her father's cabin. I... I had an episode. She said something was wrong with me. She was afraid of me. And... she ran away.”

“What happened?” Hannibal asks in a gentler tone. “Why was she afraid?”

“I hallucinated that I killed her,” Will responds. “But it wasn't real. I _know_ it wasn't real.” The words are both insistent and pleading. 

The psychiatrist gazes down at the sink again and then turns away from it, an almost _pained_ look on his face. He turns in an odd sort of circle and then walks back to Will, kneeling before him and covering his face for a moment, no doubt needing to collect himself before he can speak. 

(Will is certain there are parts of himself that aren't even aware of what's going on right now; perhaps there are parts of his consciousness still in bed or in the woods or on that plane, or even back in Minnesota in that cabin.)

“Will,” Hannibal says gravely, “We have to call Jack.” He goes on to say that Will cannot run from this—tells him that if he runs, it will only be worse.

Will can only nod weakly. 

(He's too numb to do anything else.)

~*~

The next several minutes... hours... are a blur. He is aware of Jack's anger and disappointment and disbelief. He is aware of Beverly scraping Abigail Hobbs' blood from under his fingernails, just as he is aware of the fact that she doesn't want to believe that he's done what the evidence _will prove_ that he's done. He's aware of the heartbreak in Alana's eyes, and the heartbreak in his own trembling voice when he converses with her. 

(She's going to be taking care of his dogs, though, and that means more to him than he can begin to express.)

He is aware of the wendigo, too—aware of its presence on the other side of that one-way glass. He can feel it looking at him, he doesn't have to _see_ it, and it gives him chills like his fevers _never_ did.

Jack tells him that he's sick; that they found several of his fishing lures made of human remains: hair, bone fragments, pieces of lung. Parts of Cassie Boyle, Marissa Schuur, Donald Sutcliffe, and Georgia Madchen. It makes no sense, because Will knows he wasn't sick when Cassie Boyle and Marissa Shuur were killed. He tells Jack this, and Jack gives him a half-angry, half-hurt stare.

“That is not an argument you want to be making right now,” Jack intones. “Not with me.”

“Because then, I'd be a psychopath,” Will responds in a surprisingly level tone. The thing is, he _knows_ he is _not_ a psychopath. 

“My biggest fear is that we'll learn that you knew what you were doing the whole time,” Jack says, and Will honestly doesn't know whether to laugh or cry or scream. He feels like he could do all three of them, but he actually does none of them. 

“You don't have to be afraid of that, Jack,” Will tells him, and he means it. He wants Jack to believe it. The person they have to fear... it isn't him. “There is something that you _should_ be afraid of, though.”

“Yeah? What's that?” Jack asks, probably just to humor him. 

“Whoever is doing this to me--”

“Someone's doing this to you?”

“They'll be close to you.” _Yes, there is a madman among them_. “It could be someone here, working with you.”

“So that's it? It's a set-up.” Jack sounds entirely unconvinced and unimpressed, not that Will expected any different, really. But he needs to tell Jack. He needs him to know, so that when Jack realizes it for himself, he'll remember that Will tried to tell him the truth in the first place. 

Will can tell all the truths that he wants. He cannot make anyone listen. He knows this, but he chooses to keep talking all the same. “They know the cases. They know forensics. They know that I'm... unstable.”

Jack asks him if he realizes how paranoid he sounds, and yes, Will _does_ realize how paranoid he must sound to someone who has come to the conclusion that _he_ is a psychopathic serial killer. 

He doesn't answer Jack's question, though. Instead, he simply says: “Or, it could just be _you_. Then I'd be _really_ screwed, wouldn't I?”

Jack sighs. “I wanted to be the one to do this,” he tells him, as if it makes this easier on both of them somehow, but it doesn't make anything easier. Jack is the one to read him his Miranda Rights, the one to tell officers to cuff him and lead him out to the awaiting ambulance. The ambulance that will carry him to whatever medical facility they've chosen, where Jack has told him that he will get whatever care he needs to make him better again, essentially.

He doesn't know what 'better' is, anymore. He doesn't know if he'll _ever_ be 'better'. What he _does_ know is that, after this, they'll be taking him to Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. And isn't that just a lovely dose of irony? 

( _“I won't leave you here,” Jack Crawford had told him when they'd gone to see Gideon._

_“Yeah,” Will had replied. “Not today.”_ )

~*~

He escapes the ambulance much like Gideon did, he knows, with one exception: He does not harm anyone. He gets the hell out of there and he pays a visit to Hannibal, who is sitting at his desk in his office, reading a large textbook which Will cannot identify from his current vantage point. He is in the loft area of the office, sitting down with his back pressed against one of the many bookcases, not exactly hiding but not exactly engaging in any sort of interaction the other man, either. 

Dr. Lecter seems completely unsurprised to see him. “Hello Will,” he greets. “How are you feeling?”

“Self-aware,” Will truthfully answers. 

Their conversation doesn't differ much from their usual ones. There is no anger, and Hannibal does not outright accuse him of killing Abigail, even though he does admit that all evidence points to him. Will doesn't need to be told this—he knows well enough that the 'evidence' damns him. However, he _knows_ that he didn't do this. He _knows_ that he is not a mass-murderer. Perhaps if it was just Abigail, he could believe it (even though he knows he wouldn't have harmed her, no matter how far he'd crawled into Hobbs' mind, and no matter how far Hobbs had embedded into his own mind). But taking into consideration all the other murders....

“I know who I am,” Will says, and he means that, too.

The psychiatrist argues with him now, but there is still no sense of anger, just a firm redirection: “No. All sense of who you are has been distorted by your illness. You know who you are in this moment, but that is not always the case, Will.”

“I didn't kill any of them,” Will insists, feeling quite secure in this knowledge. “And somebody is making sure that no one believes me.”

Hannibal proposes an odd sort of exercise, unconventional and honestly... very much like the psychiatrist himself, Will supposes. “If we're to prove you didn't commit these murders, perhaps we should consider how you could have, and then disprove that.”

They walk through each murder. Cassie Boyle. Marissa Shuur. Donald Sutcliffe. Georgia Madchen. Hannibal gives him a twisted motive for each and every one of them and Will denies it all. However, the denial is not enough to sway the other man: “You catch these killers by getting into their heads, but you also allow them into your own.” He sounds very reasonable, very persuasive. Will surmises that if the psychiatrist were to ever become a salesman, he'd do a damn good job. “I'm trying to help you, Will.”

He won't let himself buy into it, though. No matter how much sense it may make—he hadn't hurt any of those people, and he'll go to his grave defending his innocence if it comes to that, but he hopes that it won't. He hopes that they will all see what he is seeing. He hopes that they will _know_ he's been framed. 

They haven't discussed Abigail Hobbs' murder yet. Not like the others. 

“Then take me to Minnesota,” Will tells him, because if Hannibal wants to _truly_ help him, the Hobbs' residence is where he needs to be. “I want to see where Abigail died.”

(Behind Lecter, the wendigo is gazing at Will, and the creature looks hungry.)

~*~ 

Hannibal drives and it takes them hours to get there; Will sleeps a lot of the time, exhaustion having taken its toll on him. They leave in the rain but once they arrive, it is merely overcast. They step into the nightmare-house together, and Will sees himself standing in Hobbs place on the morning that he gets that 'warning' phone call. 

His “hello?” is hoarse, rough with the sudden sense of trepidation that has washed over him. 

“Will.” It is Hannibal's voice, and Will doesn't understand, can't bring himself to--

Dr. Lecter says his name again, and then: “We're here.”

Will opens his eyes. He is still in Hannibal's car and they've only just arrived at the Hobbs' property. The dream had felt so vivid, but then again, all of his dreams do these days. 

He exits the car, heading for the house; he tears down the yellow police tape and they enter through the sliding glass door. Will feels anxiety prickling at him, making him move just a little more hurriedly, his movements jerky. He feels like a newborn fawn, all wobbly legs and excitement and fear. 

He comes to a stop in front of the fireplace, remembering when Abigail asked if they were going to reenact the crime; she'd told Will that he could be her dad, Alana her mom, and Hannibal... the man on the phone....

Will swallows hard and glances back at Lecter. “Are we going to reenact the crime?” he asks, repeating Abigail's words, wondering if the psychiatrist will _understand_ , as he himself is beginning to. 

If Hannibal feels any sense of curiosity or alarm, he doesn't show it. His face is blank, posture guarded and yet impossibly open, almost relaxed. “If that would help you,” he responds, tone even and maybe even a little detached-sounding.

There is more blood in the kitchen, _newer_ blood that wasn't there when Garrett Jacob Hobbs sliced Abigail's throat open. There is a lot of it, too much for the victim – for Abigail – to have survived. It's all congealed, dried, and the sight of it makes him feel nauseated. 

“It's as if Abigail was _supposed_ to die in this kitchen,” Hannibal says, standing a few feet in front of him, back to him. 

“Her throat was cut.” Will's gaze lingers on the large bloodstain, the cogs turning, his mind cataloging all of this, conjuring up images of Abigail's blood spraying out of her neck, out of her body, leaving her carotid in large spurts. “She lost great gouts of blood.” He points. “There's an unmistakable arterial spray.” 

“They haven't found her body,” Hannibal tells him, and Will doesn't need to be told this. He already knows that every part of her is gone, hidden away, _used_ , except--

“Just the one piece,” he replies, remembering the ear in his kitchen sink. The ear that his stomach rejected. The ear that he _knows_ he did not put there. 

“If you were in Garrett Jacob Hobss' frame of mind when you killed her, they may never find her.” Lecter's tone is matter-of-fact, _knowing_.

“Because I honored every part of her.” It isn't a question—it doesn't need to be. 

“Perhaps you didn't come here looking for a killer,” Hannibal suggests, his tone persuasive, supportive, like he is trying to lead Will down a path that he doesn't want to go down while simultaneously silently promising to stay with him for the entirety of the journey. “Perhaps you came here to find yourself. You killed a man in this very room.”

He tells Hannibal that he saw Garrett Jacob Hobbs as a man filled with dark, swarming flies, and he took it upon himself to scatter them (and this sounds familiar to him, feels familiar to him, perhaps he read about it once in a book before he started living it). 

“At a time when other men fear their isolation, yours has become understandable to you,” Hannibal says as he circles Will, moving in close, and in his voice, Will can hear a sense of _pride_. “You are alone because you are unique.”

“I'm as alone as you are,” Will responds, carefully avoiding eye contact. The veil is beginning to rise. 

“If you follow the urges you kept down for so long...cultivated them as the _inspirations_ they are, you would have become someone other than yourself.” He speaks like a man with experience in this area, he speaks like an artist trying to finish a particularly challenging painting or sculpture (sculpture... oh how that seems to _fit_ ). He speaks like a man worn almost raw in places, practically begging another to see him as he is and as he was whilst simultaneously urging Will to see _himself_ as Hannibal himself sees him.

_Accept yourself as you are,_ goes unspoken, but Will hears it all the same. _Accept yourself as the killer you know you are; accept me as I accept you, and we don't have to be alone anymore, ever again_.

The darker part of his psyche finds the unvoiced offer tempting despite the obvious dysfunctionality of it—there is a promise of companionship, of total and unconditional acceptance. Hannibal is watching him bloom and hoping that he'll be the flower that he wants him to be. But Will is not the lily that Hannibal wants him to be. He is a lotus of his own making. He knows who he is, and he tells the psychiatrist as much. 

“I know who I am. I'm not so sure... I know who _you_ are anymore.” And maybe he never knew who Hannibal at all. “But I am certain one of us killed Abigail.” 

“Whoever that was killed the others.” Hannibal's dark eyes are shining. 

Will pulls the gun from his jacket pocket and he aims it at the man before him. He honestly doesn't know if his intent is to kill him or to make him talk or to... he doesn't know. He no longer knows what to expect, but he does know that he is more lucid than he has been in what feels like forever, and he knows that he finally sees the one who has been hiding from them all.

“Is this who you really are?” Hannibal asks him, eyes flicking from Will to the gun and back again. He's asking if Will is a killer. 

“I am who I have always been,” Will answers with a cold sort of confidence. “The scales have just fallen from my eyes. I can see you now.”

“What do you see?” The question is spoken with perfect stoicism, giving nothing and everything away. 

“You called here that morning.” And it is not an accusation, but a fact. “Abigail knew, and you kept her secrets until—until what? Until she found out some of yours?” 

“You said it felt good to kill Garrett Jacob Hobbs,” Lecter reminds him, evading, avoiding responding to the words that Will has just spoken. “Would it feel good to kill me now?”

“Oh, Garrett Jacob Hobbs was a murderer. Are you a murderer, Dr. Lecter?” And perhaps it would feel good to kill him, perhaps it would feel like _justice_ \--

“What reason would I have?” Hannibal asks, interrupting Will's train of thought, and that gives Will pause, but only for an instant.

“You have no traceable motive,” Will answers honestly. “Which is why you were so _hard to see_.” He's shaking violently now, filled with a bitterness and rage unlike any he's ever known. “You were just curious... what I would do. Someone like me... someone who thinks how I think. Wind him up and watch him go. And apparently, Dr. Lecter, _this_ is how I go!” He is ready, ready to pull the trigger in spite of the fact that he is trembling so badly that it's as if he's in the middle of a miniature earthquake. 

“Will,” and Jack Crawford is with them now, reaching for him, and he is also armed. “Easy!”

Hannibal gazes at him questioningly, waiting, as if to say, _what will you do now?_ , and Will levels the gun, prepared to shoot this _murderer_ right between the eyes... but Jack fires first and the bullet hits him in the shoulder.

Will slumps in the exact same spot that Hobbs had fallen when Will had shot him, and Jack kicks then gun away from him. 

“See?” Will asks, eyes glued on Hannibal, but it's the wendigo that he sees. “See?”

Will himself is finally seeing clearly—he sees that Hannibal, his therapist and his friend, is a traitor of the worst kind, but he is even more than that; he is a killer of prolific proportions, and Will finally _sees_ this.

( _'twas blind, but now I see..._ )

~*~

He's in the hospital—he knows that much. He can hear the hum of the machines, can feel the wires and the lines hooked up to him, and he is acutely aware of the soreness in his shoulder. His eyes are closed, but he knows he isn't alone.

“I know who you are, Will,” Hannibal whispers to him, voice close to his ear. “I know who you are, and who you are capable of becoming.”

“You sound so sure of yourself,” Will remarks, not bothering to open his eyes. He is tired and he feels defeated at the moment. Right now, he doesn't have enough fight in him to wholeheartedly argue. He just wants to sleep....

“I am sure of myself,” the psychiatrist answers. “We come from the same mold, you and I. We are two pieces of the same puzzle. Like attracts like, and we were drawn to each other from the start, weren't we?”

Will is too weak in spirit to scream or refute the other man's statements (not to mention that, yes, he was drawn to Hannibal in the beginning; it is what kept him going back to him, because Lecter seemed to understand his mind), so he says nothing. There is a heaviness in his chest and the psychiatrist's acts of treachery replay in his mind again and again.

Lips, cool and smooth, press chastely against his damp forehead and he is too shocked to recoil. The gesture is as tender as it is malicious—and entirely _toxic_.

(Hannibal has proven to be Will's own personal Judas, and--)

~*~

“Hello, Will.”

Will opens his eyes, and turns his head. On the other side of the bars, Hannibal is gazing at him.

“Hello, Dr. Lecter.”

(And it begins like _this_.)

 

~END~


End file.
